Flyers Live Free

Six lone figures glided through the cool rural breeze with their
arms outstretched. Four wore commonplace clothing which flapped
in the oncoming wind; the other two, a man and woman pair, were wrapped
in silver-gray fabric that obscured all but their faces. At the
front of their formation, three hundred meters above the ground,
a bearded face that was usually calm held a twinge of urgency. His
name was Luther Trundle, and the Flyers he'd led against ceaseless
resistance were nearing their objective.

There was a particular form of "energy" positively identified
with all living things and with matter in general. When evidence
pointed to the link between this energy and gravity, the implications
had seemed obvious to Luther: if an energy controlling system were
set up in a living being, that being could reduce or even nullify
the gravity affecting it for as long as it concentrated. He followed
this idea out, and at last built a human-sized contral system, which
he dubbed the Powered Flight suit.

Luther was the first person to use a Powered Flight suit, and
the first person to be able to fly without one. Three of his comrades
now shared this ability, as the six of them — all bound by friendship
and a respect for Luther — streaked onward to save thousands of
people, again.

No one had ever believed the Powered Flight suit possible, and
when Luther Trundle designed it many still refused to accept its
existence. The five associates who stuck with him were probably
the only people on Earth who didn't think his ideas were immoral
or that he was a vigilante. No one would hire his services, not
even the United States government, and none except his five closest
friends had ever believed him whenever his investigations led him
to find that several lives were threatened.

He had long ago been branded a quack, and that label stuck with
him even now as he raced to stop a nuclear power plant from
self-destruction.

Below his group loomed the dome of the power generator. At
their cruising clip of twenty meters per second (a little over forty
miles per hour) they began to swoop down toward it with a hand signal
from their fast leader. Luther flew slightly faster than the rest
of them, being the only person alive with enough control to fly at
the higher velocities. He had even once boasted about "hitting
thirty," a speed one-and-a-half times greater than most of the
Flyers' maxima.

"All right," he said with smiling determination showing through
his beard. "The door is probably locked tight. We'll need a
battering ram — aha! Alex, Joe, Allison: help me get that iron
pipe. Robert and Joyce, you just keep carrying that anti-oranur
shield."

The two figures cloaked in silver-gray supported their square
burden between them. Robert and Joyce had joined Luther as a
husband-and-wife pair, yet had been the slowest in learning bodily
flight control.

The other four quickly snatched up the heavy beam.
"Ready — hit!" Luther commanded as they coordinated their metal
attack on the door. The barrier relented and crashed down.

"Intrusion!" blared the alert from inside. The six Flyers
bolted through the gaping doorsill and were almost immediately fired
upon; the security guards had been given orders to shoot to kill
the "group of flying vigilantes."

"They're trying to kill us!" exclaimed Joe. "What'll we do?"

"The same thing we always do. We keep on going and dodge their
shots like crazy."

Avoiding things in powered flight was not too difficult to do.
Since their flying ability flowed from the very force of life that
they were constructed of, it helped in preserving their life to the
extent of subconscious tactical avoidance. And since the security
guards in the power plant were at best mediocre shots, they failed
to shoot down any of the Flyers.

"The core is that way!" Luther shouted above the din.

How could any manufacturing company be so blind as to give faulty
carbon rods to a nuclear power plant? Though the instruments would
read safe levels, the reactor core would be on the verge of a meltdown;
and even if the problem was discovered, by then it would be far too
late to do anything. . . .

There was no time to make the guards listen, and the Flyers
probably wouldn't be believed anyway. The barrage of bullets
continued; this the Flyers could easily avoid. Robert and Joyce,
the two who had the weakest Life Force control, used the steel shell
of their oranur shield to deflect the few bullets that got too close.
But Luther could not avoid a metal derrick felled on him by a guard
that knew what to do.

"Unngh!" cried Luther as the derrick pressed his left leg
against the floor. He would have been an easy target, he thought,
had not the tower's metal skeleton blocked the security guards' line
of fire.

Allison swooped toward him instantly, determined to free the
one she cared for the most. She grabbed the girder pinning Luther
and pulled it up and off of him with all her momentum and might.
Through the strain, she managed to move it long enough for Luther
to fling his leg out of its grip, hurt but not crippled.

She flew to his side. "Luther, are you all right?" she asked,
and kissed his forehead. They had fallen in love with each other
when the Flyers were still new.

"Yeah," sighed Luther beneath his continuous smile. "Come on;
we have work to do."

Luther pushed off with his good foot and wafted five meters
upward while rubbing his knee. The joint probably would have been
broken if not for the protective Life Force field that surrounded
him.

They'd made it past the first line of defense; now they were
nearing the core and all its lethal radiation. Probably none of
the plant workers were aware of just how much radiation was being
released, in both the "accepted" and controversial oranur forms.

The radiation was already beginning to affect Luther's group;
their flying abilities were slowly being drained to lesser levels.
"Robert, Joyce — get that oranur shield over here. We're gonna
need it badly pretty soon."

They arrived, and he continued: "Now, everyone, get behind the
shield and follow me!"

Luther shielded his path with the lead, steel, and cotton plate
as he plunged toward the atomic pile area, the others following
closely. "I can feel it already," he announced. "The core is
producing far more radiation than it has any right to, and the
detectors are hardly registering a thing. Someone's going to have
to get to the controls and shut everything down, before we repeat
the China Syn—"

Luther peeked over the shield and saw four triangular steel
walls sliding toward each other, closing the gap between themselves
as they sealed off the final hallway. "Going at this rate, we'll
never make it through. The five of you stay back; I'm going to try
to hit thirty."

They gasped. Luther, and Luther alone, had enough control to
fly that fast at all, and he'd only ever done that once before.
He charged ahead in streamlined fashion, and as the protective
penumbra of his oranur shield ebbed from the rest of the Flyers,
he picked up more speed than ever.

He hit thirty. He shot crosswise through the shrinking crevice
with bare millimeters remaining, and shook as he heard the clank
of the shutting doors behind him.

'Now I'm on my own,' he thought. 'And I don't have much time.'
The access corridor was over fifteen meters high, divided along
its walls into three separate walkway levels. Somewhere in the
place, he remembered from the power plant's layout, was the final
battery of reactor controls.

He spied the main control panel and bolted to it. Landing on
the second-story ledge, he set the shield down between himself and
the core and nervously scanned the array of switches, buttons, and
levers. He glanced toward the atomic pile once, almost hearing its
dangerous ethereal buzzing, and realized exactly how little time
he had left — less than half a minute.

He fumbled instinctively for the lever marked "EMERGENCY
CONTROL ROD ENGAGE," and yanked it down. A nearly imperceptible
clank sounded from deep within the structure as the defective rods
were shoved completely into the plutonium heap. Even poorly made
rods still had enough carbon in them to stop the reaction when pushed
in all the way.

But his work was not yet done. He jabbed a red button and
listened as a lead dome came down on top of the distant core. And
lastly, for good measure, he threw the anti-oranur shield against
the far wall, sealing the core off from the outside world forever.
"I did it," he breathed in exhausted triumph. "I did it."

He had stopped a project he despised, and would have gladly
done so even if the carbon rods had been all right. He had always
disliked nuclear fission as a source of energy. Thermonuclear
fusion wasn't the best either, but at least it didn't melt down or
leave behind radioactive waste.

His thoughts disintegrated when the steel door began to open.
For an instant, he expected to be set upon by the security guards,
but his gut reaction banished that idea. The warning klaxons had
gone off before he'd shut down the core; the keepers of the reactor
knew what good he had done.

His five flying companions sailed through the hole as it grew,
almost as excited as they were relieved. "Luther," commented
Allison, "You've done it again."

The barrier withdrew completely. From its far side, assembled
like a race of zombies, the power plant's full arsenal of employees
advanced toward the Flyers. They looked more dead than they had
ever been, but Luther felt something new about them; as though they
had always been that way and had finally realized it.

A hundred people came toward the Flyers, people who had been
dead all their adult lives and now wanted to live again.

"Mr. Trundle, we didn't mean to do what we did. I can't explain
it, but we've all become sick of this nuclear power plant. We're
starting to realize what you and your group represent, and we like
it a whole lot better than what this place stands for."

'All minds speaking as one,' Luther thought. "I can tell you exactly why you
hate it here," he said matter-of-factly. He pointed to one of the posted
warnings on the wall. "The U.S. government can make all the restrictions it
wants on how little radioactivity can escape a reactor, but the thing
they don't — or won't — realize is that it's not the nuclear
radiation per se that's wearing you down." He hefted the anti-Oranur
shield to demonstrate. "Any violent, high-energy reaction excites the natural
cosmic energy in the air, or even in deep space, until it turns into a form
harmful to all living beings — Oranur. No amount of lead or concrete or
heavy water can contain Oranur radiation. An organic-inorganic
layered wall like this one," he indicated the shield, "Can protect
you for a while, until it gets contaminated by the Oranur too. You've
probably all had old medical problems start to act up, or never cease,
since you started working here; Oranur always attacks each individual
at his weakest spot. This has been know an proven countless times,
but the Atomic Energy Com—"

The man at the head of the group cut
Luther short. "What we're trying to say is we want to join you.
We want to be a part of the Flyers."

Luther was stunned. "Flyers," he whispered to himself. "A
hundred of them, all Flyers. Our group hasn't changed members since
its beginning."

He looked to his comrades. All showed excitement at the
prospect while they scanned the workers, except for Allison. She
stared right back into his eyes, looking for his reaction. She
found, quite quickly, that he wanted this more than anyone else.

"Before I let you join," Luther explained, "I'd best tell you
what you'll be getting yourselves into. The Flyers are social
outcasts, not because we're strange, but because we understand things
in a way no politicians can. Life is a force of love, and we co-exist
with that; but the world is run by politics, which is almost the
exact opposite of the Life Force. No government on Earth will
recognize us, no private institution will budge for our merciful
causes.

"In short, we're scavengers. We have no source of income; the
Flyers live free! Everyone is out to get us, and I'm not being
paranoid when I say that. Your equipment consists of your body,
your mind, and an iron will which few people possess; along with
your Powered Flight suit, of course. Now," he continued
deliberately, "Do you still really want to join?"

The look in their eyes said it all. It cried out, "Yes!," and
Luther wept in joy.

The Flyers led the hundred out through a back entrance on foot.
Luther wondered long and hard about gathering up equipment for
making a hundred Powered Flight suits. There would be enough cotton,
steel wool, and pipes involved to cover half an acre, all of which
had to be hand processed since the design had never been machined
or mass produced.

But they would do it. The Flyers would increase their numbers
twenty fold and become a powerful, persuasive force of people from
every corner of life. And the perverted, wounded world could start
to heal again.